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As I was preparing yesterday’s post on what Anglican priests think of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, a lot more material came to the fore.
Trinity Sunday
As regular readers and churchgoers know, June 12, 2022 was Trinity Sunday.
At the Priory Church of St Bartholomew in London, it was also Confirmation Day for a blessed handful of the congregation.
The Revd Marcus Walker, St Bartholomew’s vicar, is on the right of the photo below. The Bishop of London, the Right Revd Sarah Mulally, is in the centre:
Did you ever wonder why mitres are shaped with a point?
Our vicar told us on Pentecost Sunday — the week before Trinity — that mitres are shaped that way to suggest the tongues of fire that descended on the heads of the faithful on the first Pentecost, signifying the arrival of the Holy Spirit.
It is a pity that the Bishop chose to preach on The Shack in her sermon. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear — no!
Not surprisingly, those preaching on Trinity Sunday dread it because it requires in some measure explaining the holy mystery of the Triune God. It is not unusual for a vicar to assign the sermon to an ordinand — trainee priest — who is a member of his congregation.
St Patrick used a shamrock. However, a Lutheran pastor in the United States uses an egg, which, in some ways, is even better. His sister, whom I cited in my post, wrote on another website (emphases mine below):
He set out 3 small bowls. He cracked an egg, separated the white from the yolk, placed them in 2 of the bowls, and the shell in the third. He then asked the children which was the egg (which of course brought out all kinds of interesting responses). He used this illustration to explain the Trinity. I think even the adults in the congregation were enlightened by his talk. The children certainly learned something that day.
Returning to St Bartholomew’s, Marcus Walker exchanges thoughts with a Catholic in the Twitter below:
Walker is absolutely right.
The Revd Matthew Cashmore is the vicar of St Anselm’s in Hayes, Middlesex, near Heathrow Airport. For centuries, it was a rural area. Now it is very much a part of Greater London. Its growth as an industrial suburb began in the mid-19th century with the arrival of the railway. In the 20th century, it was home to many industries, including player pianos, vinyl records, caravans, food manufacturing and aviation companies. Today, it is known for food, aviation and a number of Heathrow’s hotels.
St Mary the Virgin Church is the oldest house of worship in Hayes, dating back to the 13th century.
St Anselm’s was built in the 20th century but its name references the history of St Mary the Virgin, as Wikipedia explains:
St Anselm’s Church was completed in 1929 to the design of architect Hubert Christian Corlette. Noted designer MacDonald Gill was responsible for the panelled ceiling. The church’s foundation stone was laid on 13 May 1927 by Sir John Eldon Bankes. The east window is by James Powell and Sons of Whitefriars, London. The church was Grade II listed in November 2019.[58] St Anselm’s is so-named because William Rufus (1056 – 1100) sent Archbishop (later Saint) Anselm of Canterbury (c.1033 – 1109) to stay in the manor house of St Mary’s Church, as it was the nearest of the Archbishop’s manors to Windsor, where William Rufus resided.[59][60]
William Rufus was the third son of William the Conqueror.
On to the present day, and Matthew Cashmore, like many other vicars, preached on the mystery of the Trinity. This is an excerpt from St Anselm’s Trinity Sunday pew leaflet:
To try to figure out HOW this trinity of God works. We are human and modern humans attempt to understand the world through the lens of science and ‘reason’.
The issue of course is that creation is rather more complex and difficult than we can understand.
We are not God and we are reaching and trying as hard as we can to understand things that He created and put into place.
It’s just not possible.
This is not to say that we shouldn’t try – that we shouldn’t engage in trying to understand the the universe through science and ‘reason’; but rather to accept that there are things that we can not neatly fit into categories of science that are central to how we exist in the universe.
We are not God.
Sometimes we need to accept that it is wiser to exist and simply appreciate and give thanks for what God has made – and our part in it.
Wise words indeed.
Mission work
I found out about St Anselm’s via a tweet from a vicar whose tweets I posted yesterday.
The Revd Sarah Hancock, from Cheadle Hulme, Cheshire, posted the church’s brilliant advert for a Mission Priest:
I can see why they have passed a Resolution. Going into rough pubs is probably not the sort of thing even today’s women priests are up for.
Mission work also appeared in Cashmore’s Trinity Sunday sermon, as he exhorted the congregation to think about ways in which they, too, can bring the Gospel to the unchurched. Excerpts follow:
In the name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Spirit – Amen.
Today, as I’m sure you’re all aware is Trinity Sunday. It’s a day we call to mind the Holy Trinity and what that means to us today.
Trinity Sunday is an annual reminder of the simple command to live within the love and commandments of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit – and Jesus tells us how we discern how to do that …
… our faith is a felt faith. It is a faith that exists as much in our hearts and our stomachs as it does in our brains. The moment we forget that we lose the awesome breadth of what God has in store for us – we lose the ability to engage with what Jesus taught us – and we lose sight of what the Holy Spirit wants us to do in this life.
Now, I’m not saying we should leave our brains at the door when we come to church. What I am saying is that academic and intellectual exploration has to work alongside that gut feeling we all experience when we see the work of the Holy Spirit and that gentle warming of our heart we feel when we see the love of Jesus in action.
Our faith is a broad, complex and wonderful thing. It interacts with the world in a myriad of ways and people interact with us – and the faith they see in us – in a myriad of ways.
We should be open to all those possibilities.
The fact that somebody may want to talk to us about where the Trinity appears in scripture for example, is an opportunity to engage people about their faith. For us to crack open the Bible and talk them through the gospel of John and its rich description of the workings of the Father, Son & Holy Spirit. (so I suggest you take your pew sheet home and read around these chapters!)
Or it may be that people want to know what the practical outworking of the Trinity in our day to day lives is … or they may want to understand how our love of God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit makes us feel.
We need to be prepared to answer these questions in the real world.
There are three things that I think any Christian should be ready to answer in the street.
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- How does God make you feel?
- How does the Holy Spirit guide your daily life?
- How has Jesus taught you to live a life more pleasing to God?
These questions form the heart of what we talk about in the world when we bring people to the love of Jesus – and in so doing – to the love of God and the Holy Spirit.
They are true because we experience them across the breadth of our lives and because we see them in scripture – the test of truth …
Our faith is an experienced faith.
It has to be lived out to be understood …
When we talk to people about God … We engage them with the truth of what we have seen, what we have learnt, what we have experienced in our day-to-day life with Jesus.
And we should be more prepared for it.
We should, each morning as we cross ourselves and say the Our Father – think with our brains, feel with our stomach, experience the joy of love in our heart, and ask ourselves – how can I go into the world today and bring somebody to Jesus.
How can we bring people to this church, this place and bring them to baptism – to a relationship that is earth shatteringly life changing with God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit?
It is up to each one of us to figure that out. Each one of us will bring a different gift, each one of us will bring different experiences and feelings, each one of us will have engaged with scripture in different ways and each one of us will reach somebody that another person cannot.
Nobody is beyond the love of God the Father, Son & Holy Sprit.
So, go out into the world my brothers and sisters and bring people to baptism, to this place, to a relationship with the Holy Trinity – because the only way to understand the Trinity – is to live inside its love.
Amen.
St Anselm’s is a High Anglican church, therefore, it adopts some Catholic practices and pre-Vatican II vestments, such as this fiddleback chasuble in gold and blue:
I wish Fr Matthew all the best with his parish work and finding a Mission Priest.
Those interested in reading or watching more of his sermons can find them here.
I can also recommend the one for Pentecost Sunday, another inspiring call to mission:
Another vicar, the Revd Sam Charles Norton, is also concerned about spreading the Good News in the Church of England. He begins by going back to basics, with the Bible, writings of the early Church Fathers as well as Anglican clergy who helped to develop the Church of England in the 16th and 17th centuries when it was theologically at its best:
He says we have replaced doctrine with culture:
People should visit our churches if only for their beauty, as close to a glimpse of heaven as we have in this life:
Who knows where a church visit might lead?
Trivia
In closing, new members were installed into the Order of the Garter on Monday, June 13. This ceremony takes place every June.
This year, the Bishop of Worcester’s brother was one of the newest members of this ancient Royal order. Tony Blair, unfortunately, was, too.
However, the interesting thing is that both the Bishop of Worcester — the Right Revd John Inge — and his brother, who is a Field Marshal, are the sons of butchers. Let no one say that modest parentage prohibits great achievements:
The Bishop is the Lord High Almoner, in charge of distributing alms to the poor. The office dates from 1103 and is a post in the Royal Households of the United Kingdom.
The last Lord High Almoner who was the son of a butcher was Cardinal Wolsey (1473-1530):
How marvellous to be parents of sons who went into the military and the Church!
Churchmouse Campanologist 